here's a quick way to do that: literally take a gun, put it in your mouth and pull the trigger. or if they don't have guns in sweden, take something sharp and just cut your wrists. you deserve to die, linus. shit ain't even funny anymore

I was out with an old friend of mine yesterday. She's currently studying to become a bio-engineer and is focussing her studies on forestry (or something like that). She goes on to tell me that despite studying forestry, she cannot actually go into the nearby forests alone because she's afraid as hell of what kind of people she'll run into in there.

Like this one time she was walking her dog in the forest and she notices a dude is following her. They're both walking on a pretty busy path, so maybe she's just imagining it, right? So she takes a turn and goes down a smaller path. Dude still follows her. But maybe she's paranoid, right? It's all in her head, right? So she leaves the path and just walks into the woods. The guy is still following her and is now getting incredibly close. Luckily, her dog decided to go apeshit and started barking and growling at the dude and he ran off, but what the fucking fuck is up with this goddamn shit?

So now, she only goes to the forest if she has someone (or her dog) with her. How fucked up is this shit. Fucking hell. Can you even imagine thinking 'Oh, I fancy a walk through the woods, better find someone to go with me or else I'm gonna get raped!'? Or just walking down the street, for that matter. She also told me a bunch of other occasions when she was harassed. Fuck any society where this is possible and where women have to live in fear like that.

Now, let's see what the posts below yours are.

FAKE EDIT: OH SHIT

THAT DOG IS CODDLING HER. YOU ARE CODDLING HER. THE PROBLEM IS THAT SHE IS SO DELUSIONAL SHE THINKS A FELLOW BUSHWALKER IS A RAPIST. HE WASN'T FOLLOWING HER HE WAS JUST ALSO WALKING THE TRAIL. OBVIOUSLY WHEN HE GOT INCREDIBLY CLOSE TO HER HE JUST HAD AN IMPORTANT BUSINESS MEETING TO GET TOO.

walking through the woods near our place alone (before we got our dog) a dude appeared out of nowhere jumping through the bush and started walking really close to me and it freaked the shit out of me. I sped up and got to a bridge and stopped right where I was and stared at him and he kept his head down and kept walking past me.

Odds on he was just a weirdo who didn't realise I was there and didn't mean to walk so close to me.

Reality is I'm not physically strong and he came out of nowhere and startled me. Instead of backing off, or smiling at me, or apologising, he kept coming at me.

He wasn't going to do be any physical harm but that doesn't change the fact that my monkey brain was going off like a car alarm.

Jesus Christ, Guest, just put yourself in someone elses shoes. Can you imagine, god forbid, and I'm sorry for saying this, but can you imagine if you told your mum to leave her door unlocked and you came home one night and someone had forced their way in to your house and done something to her? They don't even need to have physically gone near her, what if they threatened her and ran off? Its an awful hypothetical, but maybe it is one that will help load your CD ROM tray with EMPATHY.EXE

also I do not advocate you killing yourself, but I do advocate you having a closer look about what these stances you take say about your personality.

Just wanted you to understand that the way to treat an issue you don't understand is not to ridicule it not matter how silly because that will not help the person. Just try and be patient and understanding next time.

You seem like a nice enough person. :3 I know that when I eventually become a psychologist I can never, under any circumstance, address somebody's fear like they did in that clip. And when I discuss people's fear in person, I assure you it is something I do very gently. It is plainly evident that Maury wasn't trying to help: he was running a circus. So, I can see how you would be offended.

The fear is absurd to me, but it is very serious to that person. If I were in a session with that person I wouldn't be snide about it or tease them. I was just trying to joke and lighten the mood in here a bit by putting that up and didn't mean any offense.

Anyway, I must get back to that work. Stay classy, Succubus.

P.S: Have you guys noticed this discussion between all of you has been going on for a week? O_O

That's nothing! I had one mind-numbing conversation that dragged on for a month. There were people who just came into the thread to congratulate us on hitting 35 pages of one conversation.

I'll probably throttle one of you before doing it again._________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

i'm really enjoying Guest's claims that it's irrational for women to be concerned that there are rapists out there and the man in front of you just might be one of them, because if we consult our good friend Decision Theory, which exists for the sake of helping us define and understand rationality, it turns out to be quite possibly the most rational option available.

i'm really enjoying Guest's claims that it's irrational for women to be concerned that there are rapists out there and the man in front of you just might be one of them, because if we consult our good friend Decision Theory, which exists for the sake of helping us define and understand rationality, it turns out to be quite possibly the most rational option available.

I usually like decision theory and related topics and I agree with you that Guest's position in this debate is utterly wrong. However, I'm clueless as to how you're linking the two.

it's over the uncertainty of information (don't know if guy in front of you will rape you) and the potential for an enormous loss (getting raped). if you don't know the guy's intentions and he's giving off indications that he may be a threat, then you've got plenty of good reasons to treat him as a threat and act accordingly.

OK, getting better. If you're going to "calculate" what the best response is, it's important that you have some idea of the cost/benefit of the different outcomes and the costs of different strategy choices. Of course it's difficult to give more than some general idea of them, especially in a forum post format, but even that was lacking in the previous post.

OK, getting better. If you're going to "calculate" what the best response is, it's important that you have some idea of the cost/benefit of the different outcomes and the costs of different strategy choices. Of course it's difficult to give more than some general idea of them, especially in a forum post format, but even that was lacking in the previous post.

well, this seems like a pretty straightforward application of the minimax rule to me. so it works out to something like Pascal's wager*, except instead of the possibility of both enormous reward and enormous loss, there's just enormous loss.

*which makes it all the more ironic that Guest brought it up mockingly several pages ago...

Not exactly, constantly guarding yourself from rape also has costs of course, Personally, I don't think any of the precautions in the article that started this discussion comes close to significantly impacting quality of life though, especially weighted against the downsides.